The thoughts of Michael Cadwallader. Coffee loving, history book reading, Cheshire man.

Monday, March 12, 2007

Mass Migration Accelerating

The Sunday Telegraph reported some breathaking figures on immigration:

More than a million foreigners have been allowed to come to work in Britain in just three years - and given the right to remain indefinitely.

The numbers of migrants, who are also entitled to bring their families and settle, have been revealed in new figures released to MPs by the Home Office. They reveal for the first time the full impact that officially sanctioned immigration is having on the UK work force.

They show that the issuing of work permits to people from non-European Union countries continued to accelerate even after the expansion of the EU in 2004, which has already brought an unprecedented number of eastern European workers to Britain.

Between 2004 and last year, a record 309,000 non-EU citizens were granted long-term work permits carrying potential entitlement to settle.

So, at a time when we have had a deluge of immigrants from newly accessioned EU countries, we have had a similar number from non-EU countries, via the back door. To think that the Prime Minister had the temerity to write to me last month, exclamining:

This petition was posted shortly before we published the Eddington Study, an independent review of Britain's transport network. This study set out long-term challenges and options for our transport network. It made clear that congestion is a major problem to which there is no easy answer.

One answer, Tony, is not to add millions of people to the population in the space of a few years. Oh, and your government's claim that the reduction in asylum applications is a 'great achievement', rings particulary hollow when we can see how the numbers have been juggled around.